Understanding The Appeal of The Taliban in Pakistan

Journal of Strategic Security
Volume 3
Number 3 Fall 2010
Article 1
Understanding the Appeal of the Taliban

in Pakistan
Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi
National Counter Terrorism Authority of Pakistan, manzarj@hotmail.com
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Understanding the Appeal of the Taliban in Pakistan

Abstract
This article briefly explores the economics of the "Talibanization" of Pakistan within descriptive and
contextual paradigms, while attempting to find a best solution to counter rising militancy in the
context of realities facing the population on the ground. One such solution is the National Pakistani
Counter Terrorism and Extremism Strategy (NACTES), designed to curb Taliban financing in
Pakistan. The strategy is being drafted by National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), the
nascent homeland security coordination body set up by the state as the primary public organ entrusted
with counterterrorism, counter-extremism, and de-radicalization efforts of the state.
This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol3/iss3/1
Abbas Zaidi: Understanding the Appeal of the Taliban in Pakistan
Understanding the Appeal of the

Taliban in Pakistan
By Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi
Introduction
The past six years, since 2004, have witnessed a significant rise in incidents of terrorism in Pakistan. The writ of the state has been directly challenged by the rise of many extremist, militant groups, who have
transmigrated from Pakistan's tribal areas. These groups have assumed
control of large areas in Pakistan, like Swat in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa,
still popularly known as the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The
momentum of this extremism is marked by an unprecedented alacrity,
organizational capability, and impunity to engage the state militarily.
Scholarship has not kept pace with terrorism, and is in a nascent stage in
Pakistan, with little understanding and research among researchers, analysts, and policymakers into the drivers of extremism. Among the possible
factors giving rise to terrorism in Pakistan, poverty and poor social indicators figure prominently.
This article briefly explores the economics of the "Talibanization" of Pakistan within descriptive and contextual paradigms, while attempting to
find a best solution to counter rising militancy in the context of realities
facing the population on the ground. One such solution is the National
Pakistani Counter Terrorism and Extremism Strategy (NACTES),
designed to curb Taliban financing in Pakistan. The strategy is being
drafted by National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), the nascent
homeland security coordination body set up by the state as the primary
public organ entrusted with counterterrorism, counter-extremism, and
de-radicalization efforts of the state.
There are several defining characteristics that need to be explored to put
this extremist movement in perspective. First, the Taliban have attempted
to win the sympathies of target populations by exploiting the lacunae in
distributive social justice, thereby bypassing the framework of local
governance. The result has been improvised local economic "pumps"
catering to the masses, particularly the landless poor. Second, they have
utilized an ingenious blend of natural resources that supplements or
perhaps even equals outside donor funding; this implies that they have
adroitly taken over whatever resources they could appropriate in areas
under their control. Third, they have managed to augment their income
1
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Journal of Strategic Security, Vol. 3 No. 3
with funds generated from organized criminal activities. Last, but not
least, the informal money exchange systems in Pakistan and the various
Islamist trusts are quite active in Pakistan, notwithstanding stateenforced bans and crackdowns.
Rural Poverty and Talibanization

Rural poverty is a major destabilizing factor in Pakistan, with approximately two-thirds of Pakistani people living in rural areas.1 Authoritative
studies have documented higher poverty levels in Pakistan with decreased
capacity to acquire and hold land, which is the main source of subsistence
in the agricultural areas of Pakistan.2 Nearly 67 percent of Pakistani
households are landless,3 though this is not the sole denominator of poverty in Pakistan.4 The problem is thrown into sharp relief by comparison
to the decline in India's rural poverty during 19872000.5 The comparison is pertinent since both countries inherited a nearly identical system of
land holdings and feudalism after independence, which India ostensibly
seems to have tackled better than Pakistan; the latter seems to have alternated between monetary policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank,
and its own experiments with land reforms, which proved deleterious.6
The income disparity between the "haves" and "have-nots" in Pakistan
has also increased significantly during the same period, while income disparity has largely become an urban phenomenon in the period under
review.7, 8
Rural poverty declined in Pakistan through the 1970s and '80s, but
increased steadily during the 1990s. Strikingly, poverty levels tend to
decrease in inverse proportion to land holding, where poverty virtually
disappears with holdings of fifty-five acres and above. The scope of the
poverty is alarming; nearly 67 percent of households owned no land,
according to an officially sanctioned study conducted in 2004.9 For example, in 2004, 18.25 percent of households owned less than five acres of
land, and 9.66 percent of households owned five to twelve and a half acres
of land. This meant that very large extended families had to rely on meager incomes from this land as the sole source of income. The pattern is
dismally skewed towards a few feudal families holding large land holdings; barely 1 percent (0.64 percent plus 0.37 percent) of households during this time frame owned more than thirty-five acres of land. This is
reinforced by the Gini coefficient of land holding,10 which was very high
at 0.6151 (zero corresponds to perfect equality) in 200102. Thus, the
problem is not just lower levels of land holding in Pakistan, but also
highly unequal land distribution that has resulted in a wealthy minority
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol3/iss3/1
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.3.3.1
class that owns land and the vast majority that does not. This indicates
that poverty and landlessness are directly related to each other in rural
Pakistan.
As for spatial distribution of landlessness, 86 percent of households were
landless in Sindh (landless plus non-agriculture), followed by 78 percent
in Balochistan and 74 percent in Punjab. Evidence of income disparity in
Pakistani society is bolstered by statistics, with the Lorenz curve of 2001
02 for Pakistan lying below the 198485 levels.11, 12 This indicates that
income distribution patterns gradually worsened, resulting in higher
income inequality in 200102 relative to 198485.13 Greater changes are
visible in the higher part of the income distribution curves than in the
middle and lower part of income brackets. This stipulates that in 2001
02, the upper income brackets registered a gain in income share to the
richest 20 percent at the expense of the poorest 20 percent and middle 60
percent, which obviously increased the poverty levels in the lower and
middle brackets. This projection also points out the dismal fact that the
richest one percent who used to get 10 percent of total income in 1984
85, would be getting almost 20 percent of the total income in Pakistan in
200102. All of this has tended to create a class divide between have and
have-nots in Pakistan, and has ushered in a feeling of lack of social justice
in the society, which has facilitated the indoctrination for Talibanization.
The Correlation between Social Justice and

Extremism
As espoused by Maulana Maudoodi, a famous Islamic scholar from Pakistan, jihad is a binding duty of all Muslims. To perform this duty properly,
Muslims must begin jihad first by correcting themselves (Amar bilma`ruf), and then move on to correcting others through instructions
(Nahi `an al-munkar). One enters into a war only if the justification of
jihad makes it necessary. For example, the Taliban presumably used jihad
as an instrument of correction in Afghanistan to implement penal laws to
exert control of unruly elements in the society. The modern Pakistani Taliban has done the same; even when Pakistani military operations were
proceeding against them, they were engaged in organizing penal punishments against offenders. Certainly, Baitullah Mehsud, the now deceased
Taliban leader in Pakistan, along with Fazlullah, his deputy in Swat,
engaged in these tactics and transformed a once peaceful Pakistani area
into a militant haven.
The unemployment rate for the age group fifteen to twenty-five years in
Waziristan is above 80 percent, and could be a significant contributor of
militancy in the tribal areas of Pakistan. With such abysmal statistics, it is
not a stretch to imagine that unemployed youths may be attracted to militancy as a way of venting their grievances. The inherent structural imbalances in distributive social justice in Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA) in Pakistan have left gaping wounds, which the extremists are
quick to exploit. The NWFP, and FATA in particular, have tended to feel
left out of Pakistani development processes. A World Bank report on the
NWFP clearly documented widespread poverty, a provincial GDP which
was only 60 percent of the national GDP, and achievement in the education and health sectors well below the national average.14 It had the highest infant mortality rate in Pakistan of fifty-six deaths per 1000 live births.
Only 58 percent of total households received clean drinking water. The
NWFP does not get its fair share even in the judicially determined shares
of the governmental gross net profits.15 The FATA areas fare even worse.
Examples of Exploitation by the Taliban from Everyday Life

Several examples illustrate how the militants try to fill the socioeconomic
vacuum. Hussein Khan, who owns a pharmacy in Wana, the capital of
South Waziristan, praised Baitullah for some of his "good acts." Khan
mused that Baitullah had "restored law and order in the area. Robbers
and thieves have left the area fearing harsh punishments."16 According to
Khan, "Some people also believe that there are many bad people in his
militia," citing the killing of thirteen family members of the federal government's political agent in Khyber Agency, an adjacent tribal area, in an
armed attack by Baitullah's militia about four months earlier. "He (Baitullah) publicly apologized for the incident," Khan said. "The Taliban
involved in the attack have been languishing in (his) jail for the last four
months. They would have been punished if anti-security sentiments
against military action had not been aroused and [the] military option
had not been exercised."17
Aslam Awan, a journalist working with the jihadist publication Weekly
Takbeer, mentions the establishment of a "special task force" in June
2007 to crack down on criminals in South Waziristan. "This force
launched a number of crackdowns and made feared kidnapper Abdul
Rashid Bakakhel free some of his hostages. Baitullah also collected
donations from the local people to establish peace. It was a kind of
protection money," Awan continues.18 In the Taliban stronghold of Swat,
Baitullah's equally radical deputy Fazlullah attempted to portray himself
as a type of Robin Hood, establishing law and order through extreme and
often brutal measures with the support of local populations.19 Public
4
lashings in Mamdheray, Fazlullah's militant headquarters, resonate to the

media images emanating from Afghanistan during the Taliban heyday.20
The Appeal of the Taliban

Unfortunately, many of these acts are endorsed by the local populace,
since these are seen as non-discriminatory acts by the Taliban aimed at
punishing criminals masquerading as Taliban and committing acts of
robbery. In areas where the locals have traditionally complained of ineffective governance by successive governments, which allegedly indulged
in nepotism and inadequate resource allocation, a heightened sense of
insecurity may be a driving factor swelling the ranks of Taliban followers.
This suggests that in a closed society (like Waziristan), which is sequestered from the mainstream society at large, there is a complex interplay of
different centrifugal forces which need to be researched in their context.
The amount of aid and government resource allocation, for example,
needs to be accounted for in these areas to appreciate the dynamics of the
process. On the other hand, Marc Sagemen suggests that the commonplace stereotypical conception of penniless,21 opportunity-denied Muslim
youths turning to violence is not necessarily true. Instead, the desire to
reconstruct, or put more suitably, deconstruct the existing society for a
more egalitarian one drives some of the population to extreme acts such
as suicide bombing.
Swat, which had a thriving hospitality industry, deteriorated into a militant haven within a few years. Swat was until very recently a prosperous
area with a laissez-faire attitude toward religion. Perhaps the absence of
distributive social justice and the remnants of feudalism in the form of the
Maliks (local tribal leaders) in Swat had an effect on promoting militancy.
Some analysts opine that the social vacuum generated by the apathy of
the Maliks toward the conditions of the peasant class, and the dearth of
provisions for obtaining speedy justice from courts, prompted the locals
to pledge allegiance to Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi
(TNSM), the radical movement in the area which spawned Talibanization.
TNSM advocated for reforms in the shape of shar'ia.22 TNSM gradually
became unpopular as the movement lost steam, and the Taliban neatly
stepped in as an effective substitute. This analysis is bolstered by the fact
that the Taliban movement initially became popular in the rural areas of
Khawazakhela, Matta, and Kabal; all three areas were characterized by a
strong feudal system and what is widely considered to be downtrodden
peasantry.23 It is only after the Taliban had consolidated their hold in
these relatively less affluent localities that they started speeding in
strength to other more prosperous areas like Babozai and Barikot.
5
Thus, the Taliban seems to start as grassroots movements in feudal

dominated areas, which is perhaps the main reason why they have not
been able to gain a stronghold in the neighboring district of Buner. Buner
is characterized by an absence of the feudal system of Maliks, and
paradoxically, a poorly developed system of agriculture as opposed to
Swat.24 If poverty alone is considered as the main variable in generating
militancy in these areas, then Buner should have been the district giving
birth to the phenomenon of Talibanization since it is nearly identical
topographically to Swat except for being poorer. However, the
distinguishing feature of Bunerthe absence of feudalismhas perhaps
saved the area from Talibanization.
Funding the Taliban

Even with popular support, without commensurate funding, militant
organizations like the Taliban in Pakistan would not be able to survive.
There are commonalities shared by the systems of money laundering and
terrorist financing. Both criminals and terrorists try to exploit loopholes
in legitimate financial systems to gain their ends, underlying which is the
need to hide their activities. These activities are usually carried out in
permissive environments with lax financial oversight from banking
authorities, poor due diligence processes to "know the customers," and
absent or poor comprehension of warning flags which should raise
suspicion of illicit activity. Terrorist financing is also often referred to as
reverse money laundering as it focuses on utilizing legal assets to carry
out terrorist activities, which are often in the form of clean sources such as
charitable organizations and legitimate business organizations. Since the
terrorist organizations are now loosely decentralized, they are evolving in
their ability to source, store, move, as well as use funds in innovative
ways. Irrespective of the evolving means of sourcing and using funds, a
substantial portion of terrorist funds still goes through the formal
banking system.
Militant entities in Pakistan have turned aside from state sponsors to
other alternative sources of funding, including wealthy Arab benefactors
in the Middle East including the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
While the Taliban get most of their funding from a global network of
informal funders and sympathizers, they likely continue to receive funding from sympathetic state players in the Muslim world. This has always
tended to be a very shadowy affair, with very little information coming out
into the open. However, such a picture is not at all complete without the
interpolation of Taliban funding generated by utilizing charities, covert

"feeder" fronts, drug trade, taxation, crime, and natural resources like
gemstones, timber, and marble.
Islamist Trusts
In order to facilitate money transfers from donors, many businesses and
banks are used as "fronts," enabling militant organizations to receive
money in the name of income transfers. In the mid-1990s, the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated that fifty Islamic charities "support
terrorist groups or employ individuals who are suspected of having terrorist connections."25 The militant organizations are extremely careful about
their financial matters; in its famous military manual, Declaration of
Jihad against the Country's Tyrants, al-Qaida instructs its cadres about
handling money; the same principles have ostensibly been used by militant organizations in Pakistan, including the Taliban.
"The group follows five financial security principles: funds should
be divided between those invested for financial return and the
balanceoperational fundsthat should be saved and spent only
on operations; operational funds should not all be put in one
place; only a few of the organization's members should know the
location of its funds; while carrying large amounts of money precautions should be taken; and money should be left with nonmembers and spent only when needed."26
Militant organizations in Pakistan have tended to depend heavily on the
hawala informal banking system, whereby funds are transferred on a personal guarantee of the sender, bypassing governmental scrutiny or
accountability. Pakistani bankers have estimated that the hawala system
accounted for $2.5 to $3 billion entering the country each year until 2002,
compared to only $1 billion via the formal banking system. For instance,
in Pakistan alone there were over 1,000 hawaladars or informal money
transferors in 2002, some dealing in amounts as large as $10 million.27
Even though the hawala system has decreased in importance in the wake
of the Pakistani Government's crackdown, it continues as a viable source
of income for the Taliban. This is particularly relevant in the context of
charity money raised overseas by expatriate Pakistanis, and sent home on
the personal guarantee of a hawaladar. Trust funds and charities are all
important in this context.
Pakistan does not have laws in place which suffice as anti-terror financing
legislation; the closest laws are the Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance
2007, promulgated by the former President of Pakistan, Pervez Mushar7
raf. This law is inadequate since it does not cover terrorism financing,
though it does have provisions for a Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) to
be established within the State Bank. This is largely a placebo, since the
FMU has not actively started functioning as of Spring 2010. Terrorist
money laundering is recognized as a non-cognizable offence, which
means that the police are not allowed to launch a case or carry out arrests
of their own accord. All these legal lacunae have only added to the difficulties in tracing money flows generated and channeled by the militant organizations, including the Taliban.
The Link between Crime and Militancy in Pakistan

Raising money from criminal activities has also been a forte of militant
organizations in Pakistan; the Taliban are not loath to utilize this method
either. Ostensibly, such activities in a Dar-ul-Harb (house of war) are
perceived to be legal. This distorted ideology legitimizes many of the illegal actives carried out by the Taliban and allied jihadist organizations in
Pakistan. Funds raised for their campaign have been projected to be in
excess of one billion rupees (~$12 million) over the past two years
alone.28 In the wake of the Pakistani Government's post-9/11 clampdown
on jihadist organizations, jihadist assets were frozen, and a lot of fundraising infrastructure was demolished under American pressure. Ineffective fundraising meant that the militants had to invest in speculative
agricultural and commercial real estate investments as alternatives, which
produced huge profits.
Enforced bans meant that these properties could not be purchased in the
names of the organizations, so they were registered to members deputed
to be "trustees." Since this made the trustees the legal owners, many of
them legally took possession of the property and sold it to bona fide purchasers and fled with large fortunes to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
A severe economic crunch and the bursting of the property bubble, however, meant that these sources of money eventually dried up as well. For
want of an alternative, many of these groups turned to crime, since it did
not carry any perceivable stigma, ostensibly being committed for "higher"
causes. This is not just speculationfor example, Badshah Deen Mehsud,
a close aide of Baitullah Mehsud, was arrested in Karachi in 2009 on
charges of masterminding kidnappings for ransom, robberies, and hijackings.29 All the money from these activities tended to end in the militants'
kitty; Badshah ran a huge organization in Karachi which was organized
more like a top-down mafia organization, with squads operating in specially targeted areas. Badshah's son Meharban Mehsud was also heading a
large organization, which was allegedly involved in raising funds through
criminal activities for the Taliban movement.
8
The story of Muhammad Farhan Qasim is also instructive; he was

arrested in connection with several high profile kidnappings for ransom
involving millions of rupees (hundreds of thousands of dollars).30 Farhan
confessed to Karachi police that he had carried out these crimes at the
behest of Baitullah Mehsud, for the purpose of Taliban's "Jihad." And it is
not simply money that is in demand; interestingly, several members of
Tehreek-e-Islami, Sirajuddin Haqqani's organization, were arrested stealing walkie-talkies and laptops from electronics shops in Karachi in
December 2006.31 These were reportedly passed on to Mullah Dadullah, a
top Taliban commander in Afghanistan, now deceased, through intermediaries. The Karachi-based Balochi group Jundullah, which allegedly has
ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban in the FATA, and Tehreek-e-Islami maintain overlapping links with organized criminal mafias.
Jizya (Poll Tax)

Jizya is an important source of Taliban revenue, which is a poll tax levied
on non-Muslim minorities living under Islamic rule, and sanctioned by
shar'ia law or, in this case, the Taliban's version of it. The Sikhs living in
Orakzai Agency in FATA have faced the brunt of this ruthlessly collected
tax; as a result, many have emigrated to other areas, in which case their
property and houses have been appropriated by the Taliban. Sikhs have
lived in Orakzai Agency for decades, and were well integrated into the
tribal society. All this ended when the Taliban under Hakeemullah Mehsud descended on Orakzai; the Sikhs were subsequently forced to pay
jizya at gunpoint, with forcible conversion as the only alternative. The
jizya amounts demanded were exorbitant; initially a hundred million
rupees were demanded, scaled down to half that amount after negotiations with Sikh elders. The Sikhs were warned that noncompliance with
the terms of the "agreement" would result in the men being killed and the
women and children being converted.32
Opium for Cash

As during the Taliban heyday prior to 9/11, opium has become a major
source of Taliban financing in Afghanistan. With improvements in the
irrigation system, Afghanistan virtually has the monopoly on global production of opium.33 The 2006 harvest alone was estimated at over $3 billion dollars.34 The revenues in succeeding years have been projected to
exceed these figures. With Afghanistan currently producing 93 percent of
the world's opium, it is estimated that almost half of Afghanistan's GDP is
generated from the opium trade.35 The Taliban in Pakistan differ from
their Afghan counterparts insofar as opium growing does not figure
prominently as a direct source of income, because Pakistan produces
9
much lower quantities of opium. On the other hand, opium transit is certainly big Pakistani Taliban business; some estimates claim that about 90
percent of Afghan opium passes through North and South Waziristan and
Bajaur Agency.36 A military officer posted in the counterinsurgency operation told me in an interview: "(It) seems that these areas have become
the charas (a colloquial name for hashish, loosely applied to other narcotics) silk route(probably) the Taliban are controlling this lucrative trade
through the help of their counterparts across the border(it is hard) to
estimate the amount(perhaps) millions of dollars worth (of produce)."
Natural Resources
The Taliban had a lot of opportunity to boost their funds with the sale of
marble, after taking over the Ziarat marble quarry in Mohmand Agency in
FATA in April 2008; FATA is a major producer of marble, with around a
million tons of marble being mined every year. A substantial amount of
government input had been projected to increase marble and granite
exports to $500 million dollars by 2013; this lucrative mining business
was taken over almost completely by the militants in Mohmand Agency.37
The Taliban next took control of the lucrative government-controlled
emerald mines in Mingora, Swat. Reportedly, these mines had been occupied by the militants during the Sufi Muhammad brokered peace deal.
The nearby Shamozai and Gujjar Killi mines were also occupied, and a
lucrative militant-controlled gem trade ensued, with reportedly a third of
the profits being shared by the Taliban with the local populace. The lucrative timber trade in the Swat and Dir areas was also taken over by the Taliban. It is hard to calculate exactly how much the Taliban is gaining from
the timber trade, but it is estimated that the Government of Pakistan is
losing 65 billion rupees (nearly $1 billion) annually from the illegal timber
trade, and the Taliban seems to be the primary beneficiary.
Conclusion
It is challenging and unnecessary to point to any one factor as causal in
the allure of Talibanization in Pakistan; rather, the Taliban has shrewdly
exploited the grievances of rural, impoverished populations suffering
from social injustice and unequal land distribution. Furthermore, the Taliban has ingeniously generated income through organized crime, taxes,
and classic money-laundering schemes, while simultaneously providing
short-term "peace" and stability from local "criminal" entities.
10
As Marc Sagemen has suggested, poverty is not an exclusive driver of

extremist violence. The greatest appeal of the Taliban is the desire of Muslim youths to create a more egalitarian society. The appeal of the Taliban
to local populations is that they are able to "right the wrong"even resorting to brutal tactics to achieve their objectives. There are no sanctioned
institutions that offer due process as an alternative remedy to perceived
problems in these rural communities. Thus, the corrupting influence of
Taliban ideology in the absence of responsible governance has widespread
appeal. Some benign grassroots movements have driven people to
extreme acts such as suicide bombing as a means to alleviate the burden
of social injustice on behalf of the greater society.
Financially, the Taliban has vehemently denied getting any help from
outside the country, even though the Government of Pakistan has been
quick to point fingers at foreign hands. The militants have tended to
assert ownership of their movement as a home grown movement, rather
than foreigner-directed unrest.
While foreign sources of funding contribute to the Taliban's treasuries,
the Taliban has ingeniously improvised indigenous methods of raising
money in their own environmental contexts. The Taliban has used coercive tactics to extort money in the name of jizya. Where natural resources
were present in the form of emerald mines in Mingora or marble quarries
in Mohmand Agency, these were taken over as lucrative sources of
income. The doctrine of necessity has been invoked by the Taliban as a
justification for generating funds by crime, particularly in the bustling
commercial metropolis of Karachi.
All this income generation is supplemented by income sent from overseas
in the form of donations sent by sympathizers and organizational operatives. This radical "remittance" is still largely invisible to financial oversight bodies in Pakistan because it is channeled through informal money
laundering networks. Islamist trusts and charities also generate money
for the Taliban. Even though many such trusts have been banned in Pakistan and around the world, they have re-branded themselves as secular
entities. This trend has been overlooked by law enforcement authorities in
Pakistan, which traditionally have given these trusts and charities considerable leeway.
Thus, the highly flexible money raising infrastructure of the Taliban in
Pakistan has to be recognized in the context of being tailored to its own
indigenous environment, and local stakeholders have to be involved in the
11
process of curbing terrorist financing. All these facets have to be recognized in the context of an overarching strategy, such as the NACTES currently under deliberation by the Government of Pakistan.
About the Author

Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi, LLM, LLB (Hon.), MBA, MBBS, is Director of
Research and Analysis, National Counter Terrorism Authority of Pakistan. He is a former Lecturer in Policing and Criminal Investigation at the
University of Central Lancashire, UK. His areas of research expertise are
the radical Islamist militancy in Pakistan, inter-faith dialogue, and the
deconstruction of the global communicative jihadist discourse. He is a
Senior Associate Editor of the Long War Journal, and has authored two
books on the subject of the Taliban in Pakistan, besides having written
extensively for numerous professional journals. The author may be
reached for comment at: manzarj@hotmail.com.
References
1 "Rural Poverty in Pakistan," Rural Poverty Portal, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), available at:
http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/pakistan.
2 T. Anwar, S. K. Qureshi, and H. Ali, "Landlessness and Rural Poverty in Pakistan,"
The Pakistan Development Review, 43:4 (Winter 2004).
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid. See also: S. Malik, "Determinants of Rural Poverty in Pakistan: A Micro
Study," The Pakistan Development Review 35, No.2 (Summer 1996). Another
instructive treatise is R. Amjad, "Solving Pakistan's Poverty Puzzle: Whom Should
We Believe? What Should We Do?" The Pakistan Development Review 42, No. 4
(Winter 2003).
5 A. Panagariya, "India: The Emerging Giant," Oxford University Press, 2008.
6 Malik, 1996 and Amjad 2003.
7 Panagariya, 2008.
8 Anwar, Qureshi, 2004.
9 Ibid.
10 The Gini Coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion, commonly used as a
measure of inequality of income distribution or inequality of wealth distribution. It
is defined as a ratio with values between 0 and 1: A low Gini Coefficient indicates
more equal income or wealth distribution, while a high Gini Coefficient indicates
more unequal distribution; 0 corresponds to perfect equality (everyone having
exactly the same income) and 1 corresponds to perfect inequality (where one person has all the income, while everyone else has zero income).
12
11 In economics, the Lorenz curve is often used to represent income distribution,

where it shows for the bottom x% of households, what percentage y% of the total
income they have. It can also be used to show distribution of assets.
12 Anwar, Qureshi, 2004.
13 Ibid.
14 World Bank, "Pakistan: NWFP Economic Report," 2005.
15 Govt of NWFP, "Arbitration on Net Hydel Profit Between NWFP & WAPDA,"
Finance Department, 9th October 2006.
16 Aamir Latif, "Pakistan's Most Wanted," Islam Online, January 29, 2008, Asia and
Australia section, available at: http://tinyurl.com/32m9gpd (www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1199280012324&pagename=ZoneEnglish-News/NWELayout).
17 Ibid.
18 Mohammad Shehzad, "Why is the Pakistan Army Scared of This Man?" Rediff
News, special report, online edition (March 2006), available at:
http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/mar/10pspec.htm.
19 Rahimullah Yusufzai, "Inside Fazlullah's Headquarters," The News on Sunday
(Pakistan), special report on Swat, November 4, 2007.
20 Ibid.
21 Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
22 Maqsood Ahmad, "Disaffected peasantry and the Taliban," Herald, December
2008.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (Lahore, 2002:
Vanguard Press).
26 Ibid, 63.
27 Ibid.
28 Maqbool Ahmed, "In the name of God," Herald, October 2008.
29 Maqbool Ahmed, "Wanted: Threat Perception," Herald, May 2009.
30 Maqbool Ahmed, October, 2008.
31 Ibid.
32 "The Sikhs of Orakzai," The News (Pakistan), May 03, 2009, available at:
http://www.thenews.com.pk/arc_news.asp?id=8.
33 House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on Afghanistan, "Afghanistan: The Rise
of the Narco-Taliban: Testimony of Congressman Mark Kirk, 2007, 1, available at:
http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/kir021507.pdf.
13
34 Afghanistan Opium Survey, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2007),
available at: http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/AFG07_ExSum_web.pdf.
35 Ibid.
36 Zahir Shah, "Hostage to Jihad," Herald, October 2008.
37 "Funding Terror," The News (Pakistan), May 11, 2009, available at:
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=176843.
14

Understanding The Appeal of The Taliban in Pakistan

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Journal of Strategic Security